The Green Papers Worldwide
Monthly Rotation of PRESIDENCIES of the United Nations SECURITY COUNCIL

The United Nations Member-State occupying the President's chair in the Security Council changes with each new month in the Gregorian Calendar and is determined solely by the alphabetical order (by official United Nations designation of a given country in English) of all members of the Council seated therein in a given calendar year (the five Permanent Members of the Security Council [which appear in boldface (and marked with an *) in the table which follows] gain no special advantage in this regard by virtue of being Permanent Members: their Presidency month comes whenever their official UN name in English comes up in sequence re: the alphabetical listing, no differently than the non-Permanent members of the Council who are serving only two-year terms thereon).

In addition, the alphabetical list does not at all "reset" with the end of one calendar year and the start of the next year; when non-Permanent members newly chosen by the UN General Assembly first take their seats on the Security Council, their alphabetical position as regards the upcoming monthly Presidencies for that year is solely determined by their relationship to the last monthly President of the previous year (whether that last President is still on the Council or not) as well as to all the other members of the Council (Permanent and non-Permanent) for that particular year: thus, for example, Singapore- although new to the Council in January 2001- immediately took the President's chair because its name followed that of the President for December 2000, the Russian Federation (a Permanent Member), in the alphabetical order of members of the Security Council for 2001. Likewise, Mali took the President's chair in the final month of its two-year term on the Security Council (December 2001) while Mexico then became the President of the Council in only its second month on that body (February 2002) [Mauritius, in the middle of its two-year term on the Council, was that body's President in between Mali and Mexico- totally unaffected by the former's departure and the latter's having newly arrived].

The country currently holding the Presidency is show with a white background.